lego

Tenka Labs co-founder John Schuster is no stranger to walking friends through building gadgets using Arduino, an open-source hardware controller — except they might be great software engineers, but not understand the actual circuitry.
But Tenka Labs, which builds simple kits that help young students create small gadgets with the use of motors and other bits that connect to legos, is… Read More

Club Penguin may be shutting down, but there’s a new social network for kids arriving today from LEGO. The company known for its physical blocks and building sets is launching LEGO Life, a safe, online space where kids can share their LEGO creations, and connect with a broader community. Available as an iOS and Android application, the social network is aimed at those under the age of… Read More

LEGO has long offered the Mindstorms platform for big kids (and adults) to make cool robotic projects. Now, however, they’ve launched the Boost platform, a robotics and programming system aimed at 7 year olds. The Boost kit comes with everything you need to make five projects including Vernie and Frankie, a funny robot and robotic cat, respectively.
The kit includes a battery-powered… Read More

Boost is an impressive kit. The five on-board building experiences cover a lot of ground, from a robot to a guitar, to quasi Lego “3D printer” that’s more like an assembly line Rube Goldberg-style device that pieces together its own Lego creations.
The set is being couched as an educational kit, joining Lego’s line a step down in difficulty from the company’s… Read More

Lego! Lego! Lego! Who doesn’t like Lego? One of the most fascinating entries to the hackthon at TechCrunch Disrupt London used the beloved little bricks to help take young eyes away from screens and electronics devices. Read More

A company called Flybrix is putting legos on the wing.
The San Francisco startup today began selling build-a-drone kits for kids age 14 and up comprised of: LEGO bricks, boom arms and motors that don’t require soldering, and other off the shelf and Flybrix-designed parts.
Once assembled, Flybrix drones are lightweight and meant to be flown indoors. They can be operated with a… Read More

Ready for your semi-regular reminder that some people are just way, way too clever?
These folks managed to make a BB-8 model…. completely out of LEGO parts. And it actually rolls. And its head actually stays in place on top, as BB-8’s head should. Read More

LEGO Education is launching a new version of its WeDo robotics kit for elementary school students at CES today. Just like its predecessor, WeDo 2.0 is meant to introduce students to robotics, engineering and programming, but it’s also meant as a tool for teaching STEM in general.
The set will come with a number of Lego bricks, but most importantly, it includes a Bluetooth Low… Read More

In the future, everything will be made of Lego if the Legoizer has anything to say about it. This system, really a piece of pixelation software, turns images into Lego creations by breaking them into block-sized chunks and supplying a shopping list and list of instructions.
For example, the image above takes 34 rows of Lego to build and requires a few hundred pieces of various colors… Read More

Latest Crunch Report

Lego has a new game in the works with Warner Bros. Interactive, which brings the building blocks into the toys-to-life category to compete with the likes of Skylanders. The new Lego Dimensions game is set for a September 27 release date, and will incorporate a number of popular and familiar properties, including DC Comics, The Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future and The Lego Movie to name just… Read More

Lego is no stranger to building epic sets as tie-ins timed with the release of big movies, but the upcoming SHIELD Helicarrier set (via Wall Street Journal) might take the cake in terms of scale. Lego’s version of the floating command and control vessel used by Marvel’s fictional global super spy and defence agency is made up of just under 3,000 pieces, and includes small… Read More

Imagine a biomimetic robot that can inflate itself, bend at odd angles, and channel liquids through itself in any direction. That’s what scientists at Harvard University have created. By using squishy little Lego blocks with channels built-in, a team at Harvard has created robots can move like slugs or snakes. For example, when you close the channels the robots expand and move and when… Read More

Lego (or, if you’re pedantic, LEGO) is lots of fun. Lego Mindstorms is more fun. But what if you want to go to maximum fun? That’s where the Brick comes in. This $70 brick works with regular Lego and allows you to add unique features to your models including motor controls and light handling. The device is very similar to the actual Mindstorms brain but won’t take up most of… Read More

This is a pretty obvious movie tie-in, but it’s still pretty cool: Google has partnered with LEGO to build an app that lets you play with LEGOs right in the browser. Using WebGL and other modern web technologies, a Google team in Australia first developed this application as an experiment in 2012 and now Google is opening it up to everybody.
Given that this is Google, it shouldn’t… Read More

LEGO Mindstorms EV3. Even the name is formidable, but just wait until you connect the dots and fire these dragon-esque robots up.
The EV3 set of robotic, programmable LEGOs is the very best version of this 14-year-old product line we’ve ever seen. The most notable edition is that users can program directly from the smart brick, the computational component included in each robot that… Read More

In another episode of “Sticking It To The Man Through Lego” we present a spider that manually clicks through the pages of a Kindle book and then signals a computer to take a picture of the e-ink screen, perform some OCR, and spit out a completely DRM-free copy of the text. In short, it’s a sort of intelligent photocopier that is, in theory, completely legal. Read More

If you only watch one video today, it should be this one. You will discover that it is footage of a DIY LEGO pancake maker which is, in my expert opinion, the best thing to come out of Norway since the fjords. Created by Miguel Valenzuela, an American maker abroad, the project has been around for a few years but this video shows us how the project works in detail, further proving that the… Read More

LEGO just introduced the third generation LEGO Mindstorm sets. Like previous versions, a central computer controls motors and servos, essentially bringing the LEGO kit to life. This new version is heavily upgraded. And as a father, I must attest, I would use this set more than my kids. It’s that awesome. Read More

Lego is back with another generation of MindStorms, the company’s consumer robotics line aimed at introducing application programming to a younger generation. Kids these days grow up with so much focus on the virtual self, but MindStorms works as a bridge to connect software programming with real-world, physical actions.
The new kit includes directions for up to 17 different robots, most… Read More

Burf aka Simon Burfield is an iOS programmer and Lego experimenter who tries to take building blocks to the next level. Interestingly, if this wild rideable Lego wheelchair is any indication, he’s left the next level and is now firmly in the distant future.
Made with 12 Lego NXT motors and 12 multi-directional wheels, this carefully designed prototype can carry around a 198 pound person… Read More